


What Matters the Most in the End

by Undomiel5



Series: Servare Vitas [1]
Category: Numb3rs, Original Work
Genre: Danger, Family Relationship - Freeform, Gen, Guns, Home Invasion, Pre-Ian Edgerton, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 05:27:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15112748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Undomiel5/pseuds/Undomiel5
Summary: Stuff can be replaced. Broken doors can be fixed or replaced. Family, people, can not be replaced. Today, they both had made it out safely, and in the end that was all that mattered.





	What Matters the Most in the End

Asha would never be sure what roused her first: the slightest noise of padding footsteps, the shifting of her mattress, or the hand on her shoulder. Whether it was just one or the combination of all three, she woke from a deep sleep. It was still night, she saw, as soon as she opened her eyes to a dark room, so she had not overslept. She rolled over. In the dim light that made it through the curtains, she made out her fourteen-year old cousin Robbie standing by her bed with a dark blob beside him that could only be her aunt and uncle’s coal black Akita, Max.

“What’s wrong?” she asked softly, sitting up and glancing at the clock as she switched on the dim bedside lamp, “Are you sick?” She could not think of another reason why he would be downstairs in her bedroom at 2am in the morning.

“I heard something. In the kitchen.” He replied, his voice shaky and his wide blue eyes shining like two bright blobs of color in his pale face.

_That_ most definitely got Asha’s attention. Robbie, Asha, and Max were the only ones, human or animal, in the house. Her aunt and uncle (Robbie’s parents) were out of town for a few days, visiting a friend. Asha, who had an apartment closer to Quantico, had agreed to stay with her cousin so he would not have to be home alone or his school schedules would not be messed up by having to sleep at a friend’s house further away from school.

“Was Max with you?” She asked, pushing back the covers silently and climbing to her feet. Max was very territorial and often went prowling the house several times each night to make sure all was in order.

“Yes, he was sleeping on my bed. He heard it too. He bristled.” Robbie replied.

If Max was upset, Asha knew, something was definitely wrong. Scenarios, plans, and tactics began to fly through her head at a rapid pace as she tried to put her FBI training to use. How she wished that one of her new teammates with HRT with there as backup. There was always the chance that somehow something at the other end of the house had fallen and made a noise. But with Max on the alert, the more likely scenario was that one or more persons who did not belong were inside the house. This was so not good.

Asha grabbed her ID and clipped it to the hem of her sweatpants and grabbed her duty pistol from its place under the front corner of bed. “I want you to lie down on the other side of the bed and call 911,” here she handed him her cellphone, “I’m going to go upstairs and have a look around. Max will stay here with you. There might be nothing wrong, but I am going to be very cautious with just the two of us here. Tell 911 who you are, where you are, what’s going on. Also, you must tell them that I’m upstairs and armed. Describe me to them. Lock the door behind me, and don’t open it unless you hear my voice and my knock. Got it?”

Robbie gave a shaky nod, his face frightened but calm, and threw his arms around his cousin’s waist. “Be careful!”

“I will. I love you,” Asha replied, switching off the light. She made for the door but stopped to pat Max’s head, “Guard Robbie, pup. Anybody but me comes in, you bite him.”

“Love you too.”

As soon as Asha cleared the hallway in front of her room and the stairway right beside her door, she stepped into the hallway and closed the door soundlessly behind her. In his dark pajamas, Robbie would blend into the shadows on the far side of her bed. He would be safer there, she thought, than if she tried to get him out of the house before she had the full picture of what was going on. Only after she heard the lock engage did she start her slow, careful climb up the stairs. She wanted to get off the stairs ASAP because she was at a distinct disadvantage while holding the low ground, but she went slowly and carefully to avoid stepping on any of the creaky spots.

Asha paused part way up the staircase and peered over the top of the wall into the living room which paralleled the wall of the staircase. No sound came from behind her where Robbie’s bedroom, the guest room, and the bathroom were, but she could see that the light over the sink was on in the kitchen and heard movement from that direction of the house. Creeping quietly up the rest of the stairs, she quickly swept the near end of the house. When she found it to be all clear, she crouched in the shadows in the doorway of her cousin’s bedroom, which gave her a clear line of sight and shot into the family room, the hallway into the kitchen, and about half the living room. Then she began to think.

There was clearly someone in the house who did not belong. No one outside the family had keys, and Asha remembered turning off all the lights upstairs before she went to bed. She had no interest in standing by and watching idly as her family’s things were stolen, but at the same time, she had a duty to protect her cousin. For now the intruder probably did not know that there was anyone else in the house, a consequence of there being no car outside. (Asha’s own car was in the shop. One of her new teammates had been giving her a ride to and from work every day.)

Asha also had no way of knowing whether or not the intruder was armed or even possibly had an accomplice outside.  If she had to shoot and did not drop him on the first shot, there was a risk of a gun battle in which she could be hit or a bullet could go through a wall into a neighbor’s yard or go through the floor and hit Robbie. Asha knew that if she was hit and went down, only Max would be left standing between Robbie and the threat. Thus, however much it rankled her, Asha decided it best to sit tight for the moment and wait for backup, only challenging if her position was discovered or the intruder made a move for the stairs to the lower floor.

The minutes ticked by with interminable slowness. Not long after Asha took up her position, the intruder—dark clothes, big build, gun-shaped bulge under his clothes—emerged from her aunt and uncle’s bedroom carrying her aunt’s jewelry box under one arm and something she could not identify in the other hand.

Asha knew how far the nearest police station was, but without a watch and without enough light to even read a watch, she had no idea how long it had been since she had come upstairs or how long it would be until backup arrived. For a moment, she wished fervently that the house had a back door downstairs that she could have evacuated Robbie from but then realized a second later that without more knowledge of how many intruders there were and where they were, she could—in this theoretical scenario—walk straight into the arms of another robber in the backyard. It was probably safer, at least temporarily, for them to sit tight. Asha had a defensible position, and Robbie was as safe as he could be and had Max to guard him.

The minutes continued to pass slowly by. As a sniper, Asha was used to long hours spent behind her rifle, starring down her scope at a scene hundreds of yards away and not moving a muscle for hours on end. That sort of waiting she could do easily, but this waiting she hated.

When the time for action finally came, Asha only had a few second’s notice. She first heard the slightest creak of steps on the front porch and then a moment later the click of the latch on the screen door.

SMASH. The front door crashed open, with the noise of splintering wood. The back door slammed open at the same time, as police entered the house from both sides, shouting, “Police. Hands in the air. Nobody move!”

Shouting back, “FBI! In the bedrooms, south side,” Asha pulled her ID from her waistband and held it up while simultaneously lowering her gun, not wanting to risk a misidentification.

The noise of a scuffle began on the other end of the house, as two officers with guns and lights raised approached her. After the pitch-darkness of the house, their lights were painfully bright to her eyes, and Asha raised one hand, the one holding her ID, to cover her eyes.

“I’m an FBI agent,” she said, “I live here. My ID is in my left hand. This end of the house is clear.”

“Asha Hunter?” One of the officers, a man, asked.

“Yes,” she replied.

The other officer, a women, approached Asha cautiously, all the while covered by her partner, and took the ID. As she did so, a bellow came from the other end of the house, “Suspect secure.”

“Upstairs’ secure,” the male officer called back.

“ID matches her, and so does the description the boy gave us,” the women said. Her partner then lowered her gun. Asha did not blame them for not taking any chances until they confirmed her identity. She would have done the same in their position.

“My cousin is the one who called 911. The downstairs is clear. There are no doors downstairs, and only the one staircase. No one got by me.”

“Are either of you injured?” The female officer asked. When she shifted her light, Asha saw that her nametag read J. Collins.

“No injuries, just a little shaken,” Asha said moving just enough into the living room to switch on a lamp.

Just then two more officers appeared in the living room, leading a cuffed man between them. So this was the intruder. He was of medium height, big build, dark haired, and wore dark clothes. He was the type of man who looked unremarkable on the surface but would have still raised hairs on the back of Asha’s neck.

“We are going to need statements from you and your cousin,” Officer Collins was saying, when Asha drew her attention off the intruder.

“Of course,” Asha said, “Let me go find my cousin and put my gun down. Robbie is going to worried.”

“Go, go!” Officer Collins replied with a sympathetic smile.

Asha trotted down the stairs as quickly as her feet would carry her without a risk of tripping. She did the family knock on her bedroom door: one quick knock, one longer knock, two quick knocks. At the same time she called out, “Robbie, it’s Asha. All clear.”

There was a long pause, and then the sound of the door unlatching and opening, and a moment later Asha had an arm full of cousin. She wrapped one arm around Robbie’s thin, shaking shoulders—he still had not hit a major growth spurt yet—keeping her hand, still holding her loaded gun, safely out of the way. Max appeared in the doorway, quietly, like a dark shadow.

“It’s alright. We’re safe,” Asha said, rubbing her hand up and down her cousin’s arm soothingly. She leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of his head.

Stuff could be replaced. Broken doors could be fixed or replaced. Family, people, could not be replaced. Today, they both had made it out safely, and in the end that was all that mattered.


End file.
